Category Archives: Trivia

“It cannot be said that Riel was hanged on account of his opinion. It is equally true that he was not executed for anything connected with the late rebellion. He was hanged for Scott’s murder; that is the simple truth of it.” — Wilfrid Laurier, 1885

An event on March 4, 1870, in Fort Garry (now Winnipeg), is still causing political repercussions in Canada. Louis Riel had Ontario Orangeman, Thomas Scott, executed in the prison yard at Fort Garry. The outcry in Ontario was so great that Riel was hanged in Regina in 1885, after leading a rebellion on the prairies. In Quebec, Riel was regarded as a martyr, and the Conservatives were blamed for his death.

Scott’s trial had been held on March 3, 1870, and was called “a council of war.” It was presided over by Ambroise Lépine, who was one of Riel’s chief aides. Riel was the prosecutor and one of the three witnesses who were called. Scott was not allowed to call any witnesses in his own defence.

The charge against Scott was that he had taken up arms against Riel’s provisional government. It was “phoney” because dozens of others had done the same thing and had been released., Later, Riel told federal mediator Donald A. Smith (Lord Strathcona) the real reason. It was that Scott had been rough and abusive to the guards and insulting to Riel himself.

When the time came for the execution on March 4, Scott stood before a wall of the prison and was allowed to pray with Methodist minister Young. He then knelt in the snow, a coffin beside him. There were six Métis in the firing party, and they had all been drinking. Three of their rifles contained blank charges so it would not be known who actually fired the bullets that killed Scott. After the guns blasted the kneeling Scott, another Métis had to dash up with a revolver and put a bullet through his head because he was only wounded.

The body was buried secretly and its resting place has never been found. It is rumoured that the coffin was dropped into the river through a hole in the ice.

You’ve got to give Frank Buckley credit. This savvy Canadian came up with one of the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) marketing slogans. William Knapp Buckely moved to Toronto from Nova Scotia in 1914, where he worked as a pharmacist.

During the flu epidemic in 1918, he invented a cough remedy called Buskley’s Mixture. It included herbal ingredients such as ammonium carbonate, potassium bicarbonate, camphor, menthol, Canada balsam (Abies balsamea), pine needle oil, and a tincture of capsicum. It is promoted for relief of coughs and sore throats for up to six hours.

He set up the W.K. Buckley Ltd company in 1920 and, within 20 years, went global with its marketing. When senior Buckley died in 1978, son Frank became president of the company and came up with the slogan, “It tastes awful, and it works!” When asked about the famous concoction, Frank admitted they “can’t get rid of the taste. If we do, we will be just another ‘me too’ cough medicine.

It has been rumoured to sell on Amazon for ten times the original price.

Trading card photo of Gordie Howe as a member of the Detroit Red Wings. These cards were printed on the backs of Chex cereal boxes in the US and Canada from 1963 to 1965. Those collecting the cards cut them from the back of the boxes.

Gordie Howe, a great Canadian hockey legend, known for, among other feats, for his Hat Trick.

Here are a few facts:

* Born on March 31, 1928 in Floral, Saskatchewan.

* Died on June 10, 2016 in Toledo, Ohio at the age of 88.

* He was inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972.

* He was ambidextrous.

* Played from 1946-1971 and 1973-1980.

* He was nicknamed Mr. Hockey.

* A 23-time NHL All-Star, he held many of the sport’s scoring records until they were broken in the 1980s by Wayne Gretzky. He continues to hold NHL records for most games and seasons played.

* He won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings four times, won six Hart Trophies as the league’s most valuable player, and won six Art Ross Trophies as the leading scorer.

* Howe was most famous for his scoring prowess, physical stamina and career longevity. He is the only player to have competed in the NHL In five different decades (1940s through 1980s). Although he only accomplished the task twice in his own career, he became the namesake of the “Gordie Howe hat trick”: a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game. He was the inaugural recipient of the NHL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

* He was slightly dyslexic growing up, however, he was physically beyond his years at an early age. Already six feet tall in his mid-teens, doctors feared a calcium deficiency and encouraged him to strengthen his spine with chin-ups. He started playing organised hockey at eight years old. Howe quit school during the Depression to work In construction with his father, then left Saskatoon at sixteen to pursue his hockey career.

* Howe was an ambidextrous player, one of just a few skaters able to use the straight sticks of his era to shoot either left or right-handed.

* He experienced his first taste of professional hockey at age 15 in 1943 when he was invited by the New York Rangers to their training camp held at “The Amphitheatre” in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He played so well that the Rangers wanted Howe to sign a “C” form which would have given that club his NHL rights and to play that year at Notre Dame, a Catholic school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, which had a reputation for discovering good hockey players. Howe wanted to go back home to play hockey with his friends, and declined the Rangers’ offer and returned to Saskatoon.

Here’s a quick quiz to test your knowledge of Canada. Don’t worry, the answers are further down on the post. If you don’t want to quiz yourself, just learn some trivia, it’s all here! Have fun, that’s all I ask.

8. When did Canadian John R. Connon patent the first panoramic camera in the world?
a) 1788
b) 1800
c) 1888

Answers:1. b) Angel Peak, British Columbia at 6,858 m. The second is Mount Logan, Yukon at 5,959 m.2. a) Mackenzie, Northwest Territories at 4,240 km. The second is St. Lawrence, Quebec/Ontario at 3,060 km.3. a) North Pelham, Ontario. It is estimated to be approx. 500 years old and is 30.5 m tall!4. b) Benjamin Franklin. He was joint deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753.5. c) Hartland, New Brunswick at 391 m it is the longest covered bridge on Earth!6. a) Goderich, Ontario where it’s the world’s largest salt mine. Sifto extracts 6,577,089 tonnes a year.7. a) Winnipeg, Manitoba on June 21, 1959 with the number 999. Most of Canada’s 911 was adopted on June 22, 1975.8. c) 1888. Even if you find earlier patents, Connon’s was the first to actually capture vistas of up to 360 degrees in a single exposure.

1816: The infamous “year without summer” caused by an 1815 volcanic eruption in Sumatra forced many settlers to abandon farms in eastern Canada and move westward into the central regions.

1832: The opening of the Rideau Canal in Ottawa enabled shipping from Halifax to Welland and beyond via the Welland Canal. For residents of Canada West, life improved considerably; more general stores opened, and goods became more diverse and less expensive.

1841: Cheap cornstarch had replaced expensive arrowroot and tapioca starch in every Canadian kitchen.

1843: English chemist Alfred Bird produced a workable baking powder by combining sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) with cream of tartar and cornstarch.

1844: The potato blight that struck Ireland and Scotland caused a famine and pushed a massive migration to Canada as far west as Manitoba.

1847: A stamping machine to mass produce tin cans is patented by American inventor Henry Evens, and tin cans became available countrywide. A taste of summer could be enjoyed in the dead of winter, which considerably improved the lives of settlers, prompting the creation of new and distinctly Canadian recipes.

In 1855, Red Fife wheat caused a home-baking craze, especially when baking powder, cheap sugar, flour and quick-rising yeast became more available in Canada. This created a huge demand for cooking stoves.

1853: New railways made it possible to ship goods from Halifax to Windsor.

1854: Construction contractor for the Rideau Canal, John Redpath, opened a sugar refinery in Montreal.

1855: Eben Norton Horsford of Providence, Rhode Island, discovered that calcium acid phosphate and baking soda worked well to raise bread and began to market Rumford Baking Powder in bulk.

1859: The government created Thanksgiving Day, a Canadian original; the United States instituted the holiday at the end of the Civil War in 1865.

1860: Mason jars became available in eastern Canada when inventor John L. Mason created the screw-top containers. With the completion of the railway in 1885, canning jars became widely available in western Canada.

1861: William Davies opened a meat-packing plant in Toronto, eventually becoming the Canada Packers Limited.

1866: Samuel Platt discovered salt while drilling for oil in Goderich, Ontario. Salt was no longer an expensive import and became widely available.

1867: The Dominion of Canada is created. Also, two New Englanders, John Dwight and James Church, launch their Cow Brand, a baking powder that becomes greatly popular in Canada.

1869: The Hudson’s Bay Company signed over ownership to the Canadian government. The company’s focus changed from furs to goods, with trading posts stocking up with a more varied merchandise.
Also, a new catalogue was issued by the Toronto-based T. Eaton Company. The most popular items were John Lands Mason’s patented glass canning jars.

1870: The first salmon cannery is established at Annieville, British Columbia. The cans contained one pound of fish, and in its first year’s production was about 300 cases. Ten years later, production climbed to 100,000 cases, and by 1900, they shipped out over two million cases.

1881: La Compagnie de Sucre de Betterave de Quebec began refining sugar from beets in Farnham, Quebec.

1890: Emile Paturel opened a lobster-canning factory at Shediac, New Brunswick. He went broke three times, but eventually he managed to turn them into a culinary treat that he now ships around the globe.

Tomorrow’s post will cover the years 1907-1980, the last of the timeline.

In Sparwood, B.C., they call it simply “The Truck.” The truck in question, a 1974 Terex Titan, is the largest tandem axel dump truck in the world. The 350-tonne, 20-m-long, 3,300-hp vehicle is so big, it can fit two Greyhound buses and two pickuups in the box at the same time.

The Titan was assembled at the General Motors Diesel Division’s assembly plant in London, Ontario (click to see a map) in 1973. Over the course of its four years of service at the Eagle Mountain mine, the “Titan” hauled about 3.5 million tons of earth. After 13 years in service, the 33-19 was restored and is now preserved on static display as a tourist attraction in Sparwood, BC, Canada.